The folks at Lenovo are going into the Chromebook space with the announcement of a version of its ThinkPad X131e for the education market. The ruggedized Chromebook is designed to handle the rigors of students attending grade school and will only be available for the education market.

Lenovo will offer the Chromebook in a customizable manner allowing schools to configure the laptops to suit, but the company has not detailed what those customizations will be.

The 11.6-inch ThinkPad Chromebook will have an Intel processor, anti-glare screen (1366x768), three USB ports, web cam, and weighs 3.92 pounds. Lenovo is also claiming the 6-cell battery will get students through an entire school day.

“Chromebooks are in use today by more than one-thousand K-12 schools, and they make an ideal on-toone device because they’re more cost effective, easier to manage and maintain than traditional laptops or tablets,” said Caesar Sengupta, director of product management, Chrome OS, Google. “Lenovo has a great reputation in schools for making durable and reliable laptops, so we’re excited to partner with them to introduce the ThinkPad X131e Chromebook.”

The ThinkPad X131e will be available starting February 26 under special bid for school systems.

Google offers Chromebooks to schools under subscription that includes hardware and support for a low fixed fee.

James Kendrick has been using mobile devices since they weighed 30 pounds, and has been sharing his insights on mobile technology for almost that long. Prior to joining ZDNet, James was the Founding Editor of jkOnTheRun, a CNET Top 100 Tech Blog that was acquired by GigaOM in 2008 and is now part of that prestigious tech network. James' w...
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